If You Loved Twilight, You'll Like The Touch Series

I just finished Deadly Little Lies by Laurie Faria Stolarz over the weekend.

This is book two out of five of the Touch series and the series is really growing on me. I finished book one, titled Deadly Little Secret, long before I started blogging so I’ll give y’all a brief description to bring everyone up to date. The story follows a Camelia, a teenage girl whose life was exceptionally normal until, seemingly, bad boy Ben shows up. Camelia is drawn to Ben even though he fled his old town to escape the accusations that he had something to do with his ex-girlfriend's death. Now Camelia is being stalked and threatened and she isn’t sure who to trust. Intense, I know.

Okay, so I know the book sounds incredibly corny but so what? I like it. I originally bought it because I kept seeing the book pop up in random places, like on pinterest and book store display cases, and like the avid reader I am I wanted to keep up with any possible/future best sellers. You know, before they hit it big. Unfortunately, the series hasn’t hit it big (yet!), even though I really like it. Like, I like it in a “the bloody thing has grown on me like the weirwood has grown on/into the three eyed crow” way. (P.S. if you read Game of Thrones you'll appreciate this, if not I'm judging you).  I think part of the series’ misfortune is that the author picked a really crappy way for Ben and Camelia to meet. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Girl is walking in school parking lot when suddenly a student’s car goes rogue and is headed directly for the girl. Luckily, a mysterious man, who she has never met, pushes her to safety and in that moment they experience an intense connection. (Oh, it gets better)  Turns out boy and girl are in the same science class together and are partnered up, only boy finds it difficult to be near girl. Twilight anyone!? Seriously, I don’t know what the author was thinking when she wrote (can it even be called writing at this point?) this part. When I read it I was pretty pissed off, but I was also on a plane to Miami and free of any other reading material so I persevered. Turns out the story was interesting enough, and aside from the beginning chapters it no longer resembled the Twilight saga and that’s why I chose to read book two. Well, that and because it’s something I can read when I’m on the elliptical for forever and it’s not a book I need to necessarily keep up on to remember the story.

P.S. I hate writing posts about books in a series because I find it difficult to describe the book I’m on without having to go into a million details about the story up until this point. Meaning, I’m not going to even try and describe the goings on of book two. If you liked Twilight, you'll like this, more book candy although maybe not as much desperate love. But seriously trying to “out desperate love” Twilight is next to impossible. I mean vampires ooze desperate love. Well, the kind of vampires that exist in the books and shows I read, maybe not actual vampires.

Oh, and one last “you should read these books” push, the author does a good job at adding little quirks that make the books interesting. For instance, Camelia’s mom is a crazy vegan, Camelia herself sculpts, and her best friends, who I find very annoying, are very individualistic. Now I’m not saying that these oddities make the book, they don’t, the story does, but it does help to give the characters depth and that’s something all young adult books need help with.


P.P.S. I know there has been a lot of talk about Twilight in my last two posts and for that I apologize.

And onto the next (well not really) . . . I'm still reading George R.R. Martins, A Dance with Dragons.